Any Doper happen to be a professional headhunter? Yesterday, I was laid off after 15 years of service to my company, and I’m in need of a new gig as an embedded system engineer.
Any other advice or words of encouragement welcome, too.
VunderBob
I forgot to ask: Any recommendations on good Web based resume sites? I know about Monster.com, purely because of name recognition. There has to be other sites that can do the job even better, and without the BS…
I used to be an employment consultant and resume writer many moons ago. I also have been laid off in the IT field and rehired by other employers a couple of times during the past five years.
Two key things: get the word out fast that you are seeking work. Work all those contacts you have cultivated in your field. Vendors, consultants who may have worked in your department, folks who left the company for greener pastures in the past, friends, relatives etc. Everybody.
Secondly, get a resume written for you by a professional writer. Don’t pay for a spiffy format, you need accurate technical content that conveys your skills including project management. Many companies will take resumes online, but they scan them for key words and do a megasort based on that data. The look of your resume has to be clean and plain to be scanned accurately.
Try flipdog.com and search around. Also consider working with outplacement firms if your skills are current. You should find very good employment within 3 months.
I am by no means a headhunter, but here goes:
I found my current IT job (and a pretty good one it is) on dice.com. But on-line job hunting is tough going, there’s precious little feedback until an interview pops up and it’s really easy to lose motivation.
Geoduck covered the resume - make it good.
I signed up to do a presentation on a moderately complex subject at the local Cisco user group, and that brought a really good lead. Didn’t pan out, but leads are gold.
I have had some leads from ITmoonlighter.com, too.
Outplacement firms didn’t work for me - they’re swamped with skilled people. But by all means try - it might be just my locale or my field.
Personally, I found that my biggest hurdle was keeping at it - keeping the faith was hard. Best of luck!
What Geoduck said, with emphasis on the networking. It’s been ten years or more since I did a lick of work that didn’t come my way because of networking. When I started, I felt so cheesy about it. What was I thinking…
I hope you’ve been keeping your contacts warm.
Hopefully some Doper who is himself a headhunter, or needs to employ an embedded systems engineer will come along, realize that “The Halls of Asgard” is nearby, and consider you.
-AmbushBug
I just finished a 2 day outplacement seminar, and I’ve gotten good advice on my resume that fit with information in the past, so I’ll use it. The big emphasis at the seminar was networking first, headhunters 2nd, ad responses third, and Monster.com et al last.
AmbushBug, by the time you see this, The Halls of Asgard will be revealed to exist somewhere in Indianapolis 
The networking thing is gold. Let everyone know what kind of work you’re looking for.
The agent who sold us our house likes to keep in touch and called one day. I told him I was out of work and what it was I did. He called back a week later, telling me that his sister worked in my field with a local major employer, and they had an opening. I didn’t wind up with that position, but I had my resume hand delivered to the hiring manager. Never discount the friend-of-a-friend connection.
Monster (Dice, Hotjobs, etc) are also a good way to go, simply because they’re quick and easy (and how I ultimately found my current position). You’ll get a lot of agencies with contract jobs, but many of these lead to full-time positions. Remember to refresh your resume on line, so it has a more current posting date. Most of these also have search engines that will look for jobs using your keywords, then e:mail you the results every week. You can get a lot done sitting at your PC.
Check your local newspapers and see if they put their classifieds online. And don’t forget to check with your state employment agency. They usually have a job posting site, and I was surprised at how many technical positions they had. Ours had a monthly networking party where they invited job seekers and hiring managers to a local restaurant. I got a few leads through these, but also found that the person in charge of hosting them was a neighbor, and she started forwarding me job openings as soon as she got them.
Good luck.
Lots of good advice here so far. I would just like to add that you should keep your resume clean. Only list relevant jobs. Keep it simple. No one cares if you worked at Jiffy Lube when you were in college if you are applying for IT jobs now.
Oh, and when posting online at monster.com, headhunter.net, dice.com, etc. Get another email account. I found that once I had a job I could never fully extract myself from all the spam lists I had gotten on during the course of my search. It would also be helpful in keeping organized to have one account that is only for those types of sites.
Best of luck!
There’s also careerbuilder.com, and there had been jobsnline.com, not sure if it’s still there.
You can also go to Ask Jeeves and enter a search query like “Are there any Whatever jobs in This City?” and you might find sites that specialize in your industry.
You might try www.alljobsearch.com. It hits a lot of newspapers and online job sites.
Oh, and anyone in Canada who needs a Network/Systems Administrator, feel free to drop me a line. I’m to be laid off next month.
Oh yeah, and be prepared for calls from Primerica. They’re an Amway-like insurance company that scours the job boards for new victim…um…recruits. They don’t care what your background is or what your looking for. When they peaked, I got 3 calls a week, all from different desperate souls trying anything to sign people up.
Again, good luck!
I think you should always try to lock up the skinny one in the red shirt and funny had in a bamboo cage* first*. Either that or trap him in a cave with a giant spider.
Otherwise, he’ll come up with some wacky plan and you’ll never get to remove the heads of those seven stranded castaways. At least you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing they’ll never get off that uncharted desert isle, though.